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Be Prepared!

In May of 2013, we had a nightmare situation that started when I went to the sink to wash my hands and found No Water. This situation haunts us mainly because it led to an emergency evacuation (gas leak) and months of repair and cleaning. When the water department from my fair city scheduled a time to come over to install a new meter, we combined that with a from a plumber to get a couple more things done “as long as the water was shut off.”

Amigo and I were home. Chuck, lucky guy, was at work and didn’t have to deal with the immediate effects of having no water. Call me paranoid (and you might have a stroke of truth there), but I prepared in advance.

Steamer: full of water

I knew I wanted to cook fresh vegetables in the steamer for supper, so I filled the steamer with water before lunch.

Canner full of water

I was planning to make raspberry jam that evening, so I filled the hot water bath canner in advance, too.

I had rice on the menu for supper, too, so I chose a soup stock for cooking the brown & wild rice mix.

I achieved my goal: I was ready to cook supper, whether the water guys were finished or not. This helped with my second goal: keeping both myself and Amigo calm. Since I had everything I needed for cooking and we had enough water in the toilet tanks that we could, ahem, use the facilities, all was well.

Your water heater is also a good supply of water if the city water shuts down. That’s 40 gallons for emergencies. There is a spigot on the bottom you can use.

Speaking of water and how frail our Eco system can be—- would you believe that a cow that is milking uses 40 to 50 gallons of water per day? Think how much ground water one of the mega farms with 1,000 cows uses per day.